Friday, March 07, 2008

MovieMaker Magic

MovieMaker Magic
SCASL Conference 2008
Andi Fansher – Library Media Specialist, Beck Academy Middle School
afansher@greenville.k12.sc.us
Royanne McWaters-Baer – 6th Grade Social Studies Teacher, Beck Academy Middle School
rmcwaters@greenville.k12.sc.us

If you have trouble downloading any of the documents, go to the SCASL wiki and scroll down to "Friday" http://scasl.pbwiki.com/2008+Conference for easy download

I created a set of instructions in PowerPoint - you can download from Google docs -

MovieMaker is a great piece of FREE software available for download from Microsoft. MovieMaker gives students the capability to combine narration, music, sound effects, still photos (using a digital camera, scanner, downloaded photos from the Internet or PowerPoint slides saved as jpgs) and digital video to create a movie.

MovieMaker can be adapted for any subject area for grades 6-12, and fourth and fifth grades with additional assistance. A project using this program will take about 2 weeks to complete and involves quite a bit of planning, but the results are worth it! The keys to making MovieMaker a success are organization and planning.

To get your project started, you will need to consider using some of the following organizational tools:

  • Timelines
  • Group Contracts
  • Storyboards
  • Scripts

Scaffolding this project by providing multiple due dates along the way will help your students be successful. Consider taking the following steps:

  1. Timelines - work with your classroom teacher to come up with a reasonable timeline. Timelines will vary depending on how much material is required in the movie, if students are taking their own photographs or videos and how much narration they must record. This is one of the most important pieces of information to communicate with the students - remind them of the timeline frequently.
  2. Groups & Group Contracts - divide your students into groups and have them think about the steps that they would best be suited to complete. Have each member of the group sign the contract. Royanne used a performance contract with her students.
  3. Storyboards (another example here)- the classroom teacher should outline the movie requirements in a rubric. Students can construct a storyboard by following the rubric. Consider making the storyboard a graded assignment.
  4. Scripts - students should conduct their research and write their script in scenes. Each and every word that will be included in their movie should be written here - this is not a time for outlines. Students may need to go back to modify their storyboard after they complete their script.

Now it is time to think about how students are going to go about researching their topic and gathering their media. Students should already have a detailed script and storyboard completed to remind them of what they are looking for. Their group contracts will help the remember what each person should be doing. We need to consider how students will store their information, how they will organize their information, citations and notes and using pathfinders.

  1. Information Storage - In Greenville County Schools, each student has a personal storage space on the district server called a "home directory". This is a secure place for students to store their work, but not always an ideal location to store group work as students must use a personal login to access their home directories. We have discussed obtaining a few class sets of flash drive storage devices for this type of group project. The drives would remain in the library and would be labeled for each group to make the project accessible for all group members at any time during the school day.
  2. Information Organization - Many younger students are not fully aware of the importance of file organization. When working with a MovieMaker project it is very important to keep all parts and pieces of the project together in one folder. It is easy to over organize or under organize photos, sound clips and video clips. Keep it simple and keep it all in one folder. Students should also be aware of the names of the media files they save - help them come up with a system of naming files so they will be easily accessible.
  3. Citation Note Sheets and Plagiarism - What a great opportunity to insert a lesson on ethical use of information and plagiarism! I like using citation note sheets to encourage students to take notes in their own words (discourages copying and pasting) and to help them record all information necessary for writing citations. (see more examples on my webpage) Make their notes a graded assignment and encourage teachers to require students to use print resources for research in addition to databases and websites.
  4. Pathfinders - A MovieMaker project is a pretty time consuming assignment - don't let students waste time aimlessly wandering the Internet. My feeling is that students either need the resources handed to them or need a lesson on searching and web evaluation - for this project is it most important that students get the information they need or is it most important that they learn to search and evaluate resources? I love to use pathfinders - research is fast and easy and students stay on task. Here is an example of a pathfinder I created for the Spanish movie project.